Monday, March 12, 2012

Joseph Kony

The hype over this guy is as wild as he is.

Joseph Kony was in fact ready to lay down his weapons in 2001. He attended the Juba Peace Process and was ready to sign. Joseph Kony found out that the Ugandan President was bluffing and was actually going to capture and kill him. That brings us to where we are are today.

Joseph Kony was not an unknown person. If people actually wanted to know about him all they had to do was search Ugandan war on the internet in 1998 and his name would have come up in the literature. The media can only put information out there, the people have to read it.

Besides, you think Kony is bad? How many are dead in Iraq since 2001 due to that illegal act? No one going to jail for those crimes against humanity now is there?

Another reality is that Joseph Kony does not create chaos, he feeds on it. The area in which he operates are lawless, corruption filled and of little concern to the outside world. In truth he exists because the international community really does not care. If the international community cared, Joseph Kony would have been in jail or at least disarmed in 2001.

Of course he needs to be stopped because he is still running around killing people. This recent media attention will do nothing to end his rampage, sorry to say. This may shock you but the government soldiers of Uganda are also guilty of using the same tactics as Kony. Want more shocking information, Joseph Kony has legal representation that is in contact with him. The problem is no one has offered him a price worth taking to stop.

Joseph Kony realized in 2001 that his cause was over. He may live out his life in the brutal fashion that he has lived for the past twenty or so years. However, his area of operation is slowly deminishing, his army is growing smaller as he grows older and like everyone else, he will die someday.

If you have ever been in the part of the world the Kony operates in you would know how difficult an area it is to find anyone. It is even more difficult given the number of armed groups that live in that area. All three countries are currently in chaos, Central African Republic, Sudan, and Democratic Republic of Congo. Each of these countries has armed groups traveling around in cars, trucks, on bicylces and on foot.

Now add the fact the Ugandan government is better served by having Kony alive. The moment Kony is dead the international aid will vanish over night. This is tens of millions of dollars gone from the national economy. Just in the past four months the United Nations has pulled funding out of Uganda because Joseph Kony is no longer a threat.

However, the real need in Uganda is infrastructe building. Roads, railway, hydro-electric dams, sanitation and sewer systems, power grids, water supply and the never ending health,education, governing issues all need to be improved/created/built.

That is the world we live in. Crazy as it seems.

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